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Full Noise by SN
Important update on 1476AMFlag in 2031: Can Dons emulate Dees after failed rebuilds?
Harry Cumming • April 5th, 2026 4:22 pm
It’s early 2007, and Melbourne is tipped to be a contender for the premiership following a strong season in 2006. Surely, the premiership drought can’t be far away from being broken.
Fast forward nine weeks into the '07 season, and the Demons had yet to record their first victory. After Round 13, Neale Daniher resigned as coach with Mark Riley taking the reins for the rest of the season.
It became apparent that the Demons were nowhere near a drought-breaking flag and would need to embark on a period of list replenishment.
From 2007 to 2012, Melbourne drafted eight first-round picks, a group of players who promised to take the club to the premiership glory that its fans had been craving for decades.
The players they drafted in the first round were as follows:
2007 - Pick 4 Cale Morton and Pick 14 Jack Grimes
2008 – Pick 1 Jack Watts
2009 - Pick 1 Tom Scully and Pick 2 Jack Trengove
2010 - Pick 12 Lucas Cook
2011 – No first-round picks
2012 - Pick 2 Jesse Hogan and Pick 4 Jimmy Toumpas
Across these stretch, only Jack Viney, Tom McDonald and Max Gawn have managed to play 200+ games and are still currently on the list. They were key pillars of the 2021 premiership. None of those players came from inside the first round.
It was a tumultuous period for the football club, with tanking allegations, numerous coaches, board cleanouts, and consistently poor results on the field.
It wasn’t until Jason Taylor and Tim Lamb joined in late 2012 as national recruiting manager and list manager respectively, that Melbourne began to form a team that would contend for a premiership.
None of the eight first-round draft picks that were taken between 2007 and 2012 were able to deliver any feasible results for the Demons, and it arguably set them back years in their rebuild.
In 2026, there is a team that’s very much starting to resemble the Melbourne Demons of 2007-2012, and that club is Essendon.
Board troubles, coaching changes, underwhelming performances, and perhaps most significantly, a number of first-round picks that are not living up to the hype.
From 2020 to 2022, the Bombers selected the following players in the first round.
2020 – Pick 8 Nik Cox, Pick 9 Archie Perkins, and Pick 10 Zach Reid
2021 – Pick 13 Ben Hobbs
2022 – Pick 5 Elijah Tsatas
More recently, Essendon have had five first-round picks across 2023-2025 with Nate Caddy, Isaac Kako, Sullivan Robey, Jacob Farrow, and Dyson Sharp all taken early in the draft. It’s too early to say just how far these players can take the club up the ladder. As for the others though, it’s got the old Demons’ battlers written all over it.
It’s probably worth mentioning that Darcy Parish was taken at Pick 5 in 2015 and Andrew McGrath at Pick 1 in 2016. Both players have been great servants - the latter is now the captain - and have had their highlights, but haven’t fully realised the potential fans were hoping for when they were first drafted.
It’s fair to say that none of these players would be considered genuine A-graders in the competition, and therein lies Essendon’s great problem. Aside from Zach Merrett, who can break the game open?
From 2013 onwards, the Dees would go on to draft the core of their 2021 premiership side. The list below paints an impressive picture:
2013 – Pick 9 Christian Salem
2014 – Pick 2 Christian Petracca and Pick 3 Angus Brayshaw
2015 – Pick 4 Clayton Oliver and Pick 9 Sam Weideman
2016-2018 – No first-round pick
2019 – Pick 3 Luke Jackson and Pick 12 Kysaiah Pickett
2020 – Pick 21 Jake Bowey and Pick 22 Bailey Laurie
The question now beckons: can the latest crop of first-rounders at Essendon be the next Christian Salem, Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Angus Brayshaw?
From that 2013 draft, it was another eight years until the Dees were holding up the premiership cup on the last day in September.
For argument’s sake, let’s say that this new rebuild of the Bombers started in 2023 with Nate Caddy. If we use Melbourne’s trajectory to the top as the metric of success, then the Bombers could win the flag by 2031.
But with growing uncertainty about Brad Scott's position as senior coach, Essendon doesn’t currently look like they’re on the way up yet.
Winning a few games in the short-term will help, but the next few seasons shape as crucial for the Bombers to get their draft picks right - especially with Tasmania set to soon stockpile the nation's emerging talent - and build a side that can resemble the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Bombers currently have selections in the first, second and fourth rounds at this year’s draft. If Merrett looks to leave the club again in this year’s trade period, then expect some more top draft picks to come through the door.
For now, though, all eyes will be on the Sunday night primetime matchup where Essendon take on the Western Bulldogs at 7:20pm under the open roof of Marvel Stadium.
